House Of Leaves - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's a book about a book about a film about a house that is a labyrinth. In short, a book that is a labyrinth.
—One review of the book

Or in other words: shy from the sky. No answer lies there. It cannot care, especially for what it no longer knows. Treat that place as a thing unto itself, independent of all else, and confront it on those terms. You alone must find the way. No one else can help you. Every way is different. And if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish.
—Footnote 140, Chapter IX

Okay, imagine that this family is moving into a new house to jump-start their lives together. Will Navidson's a world-renowned photojournalist with lingering family issues, Karen Green is a former model with self-esteem issues, and Chad and Daisy are their two lovable children. Will decides to make this move-in a documentary of how he got his life back on track, and he mounts video cameras and microphones in different rooms of the house. About a month after they move in, the family goes to visit Karen's parents. When they return, there's a new addition to the house, a closet with a connecting doorway, between the master bedroom and Chad and Daisy's room. Furthermore, out of curiosity, Will measures the inside of the house compared with the outside to find out something startling: the inside is bigger than the outside by one quarter of an inch...

Hold on, that's not what this book is about at all. The Navidson Record is a recently-released documentary-style horror film, somewhat in the style of The Blair Witch Project, which opens to wide acclaim. It spurs countless theses and criticisms from academia, both for its moving themes and character studies but also for the perplexing riddle of the house and what it truly represents. Is it a throw-back to ancient customs? Perhaps the house is a Derrida-esque deconstruction of religion? Does the house, in fact, represent a vagina? A Portuguese(?) man named Zampanò assembles these criticisms and writes what is considered a top-notch commentary on the film and how it explores deep symbolic themes of family, tragedy, echoes, and the perceptual confusion and terror of labyrinths...

Wait, that's not right either. In fact, it's about what happens when one night, Johnny Truant and his friend Lude check out the apartment of a recently-deceased neighbor. Inside, they find the apartment has had all of its windows painted black with curtains hung over them to conceal all light, and the floor is literally crisscrossed with taped-down measuring tapes. Several parts of the room seem to have been destroyed by an incredibly strong man ~~or some large creature~~. Inside, Truant finds the disheveled remains of a complex manuscript and slowly begins to piece it together, but as he does so, the world he used to know becomes infinitely more frightening...

No, no, that's still not quite hitting the core of this book. Okay, the real story is about Pelafina H. Lievre, a woman who is locked up inside the Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a mental institution. She is the mother of a lovely boy named Johnny, and she's being treated for having hallucinations and breaks from reality that caused her to harm poor Johnny. Her only love in life anymore since the death of her poor husband is her son, and she writes him a series of letters expressing regret over her past actions. In the correspondence between them, she stresses that he is a brilliant child, and that if he puts his mind to it he can achieve anything. These letters grow more and more disturbing over time as her mind begins to break down...

Wait, no, that's still not right. Okay, you're interested in what House Of Leaves is about, right? Well, this book is about that point directly behind your head. Don't look.

◊Ω Don't take your eyes off this page, off the safe glow of the monitor, the comforting shapes of the letters making up this sentence. This is safe. What's behind you isn't. Keep reading these words. If you stop to look behind you, I can't guarantee you'll come out of this ordeal alive, much less sane. Pretty soon you might find yourself doubting what is real and what isn't. Pretty soon you might start to have the nightmares. One day you'll wake up to find yourself an emaciated wreck who can't trust space and time anymore. Whether something is real or not doesn't matter here; the consequences are the same. What you need to realize is that this is not for you.

Or you can have some pancakes

with some delightful reading.

141 Unless you want to be invigorated. No...That's- it's just not- can't be- right... Source please?

This Minotaur book provides examples of:

Alien Geometries - Eventually Navidson realizes that, somehow, no matter how he measures, the inside of the house is one-quarter inch larger than the outside. Then it turns into 5/16 of an inch. Then that 5/16 corrects itself. Then everything goes to hell.
Apocalyptic Log - The whole of The Navidson Record, or perhaps the entirety of the book, could qualify.
- More concretely, the notebook which is all that remains of an Eighteenth Century winter expedition which journeyed in the same area where the house would eventually stand: "Ftaires! We have found ftaires!"
Arc Words - Delial.
Ax Crazy - Holloway.
Better To Die Than Be Killed - Holloway
Bigger On The Inside - Subverted. Tom's base is a tent with meagre supplies, and actual base consists of the Navidson estate.
Bilingual Bonus - Many. Subverted in one page of Zampanò's notes where he includes six passages of the same length, all in different languages. The footnotes then reveal that they're all the same freaking quote.
- Though you'd have to be a pretty good linguist to get a Bilingual Bonus from a lot of the parts, as one of the passages mentioned above was written in old (as in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century) Russian and throughout The Whalestoe Letters, references to Old and Middle English are made. At one point, Exodus is quoted in its original biblical Hebrew (granted, a modern Hebrew reader could still read it with ease). Most of the foreign-language references, however, are readable, mostly consisting of modern German and modern French.
- Taken from The Other Wiki:
"At different times, Truant says: 'Known Some Call Is Air Am'. Although it appears to be a random string of words, it is actually phonetically similar to "Non sum qualis eram", Latin for 'I am not as I was'".
- Also, in Chapter XXI the mother whispers "Etch a Poo air" which everyone translates quickly enough into something about an etching of Pooh Bear. However, "Etch a Poo air" sounds similar to "Ecce Puer", meaning "Behold the Son" (compare: Ecce Homo).
Brown Note - Anyone who is vaguely connected to the house, even the Sheriff who tries to find Holloway and denies seeing the hallway, has tinnitus, at the very least. It's also noted that experience with the house eventually results in one of two extremes: either great personal improvement or, well...look at what happened to Johnny.
Casanova - Lude. Truant even spies on him, and there is an extremely large list of his one-night stands.
Cluster F Bomb - page 100. In French, too.
Completely Missing The Point - The reviews on the back of the book about this "funny, moving, sexy" romance. Or maybe we're all missing the point of this love story by making it out to be horrifying.
- According to the author, we are.
"I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool."
Cosmic Horror - possibly.
Creepy Child. "Daddy, I wanna play ~~always~~ hallways!" And other instances; for example, at school all the kids are told to draw their houses. The Navidson children turn in pieces of paper that they colored several coats of black~~, with monsters in the margins~~. They have more at home. They're completely black.
Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming - Navidson's ending (which ends in marriage, the survivors returning to normal, and the house sealed off), and the very beginning before they discover the house.
Darkness Equals Death - Literally. When Holloway dies, the darkness descends on him and consumes him. Zampanò is extremely vague about it.
Deus Ex Machina - ''House of Leaves is a book in the book. Navidson burns it to help him survive his final trek.
Diabolus Ex Machina
Distressed Damsel - Daisy's scenes during Navidson's explorations. Oh, boy.
Driven To Suicide (Holloway and Pelafina
Dropped A Bridge On Him - Tom Navidson, who disappears suddenly when the house decides to go batshit insane and actively, aggressively attack the family.
Dysfunction Junction - Many of the Exploration Unit get all weird during the treks.
Easter Egg - plenty of 'em!
Eldritch Abomination - Implied. Remember that point behind your head in the introduction to this page? ...yeah.
Eldritch Location
Environmental Symbolism
Epileptic Trees (This troper's pet theory is that the book is actually sentient and thus wrote itself)
Erotic Dream (Painstakingly detailed ones at that...)
Everyone Calls Him Barkeep (Gdansk Man)
Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory (the book can be seen as a straight use and alternatively as a parody)
Fauxreigner (Is Zampanò French, Portuguese, or Spanish? The strongest implication is that he's French, due to Truant noticing he recites the French bunkers that were taken over by the Viet Minh, driving the French out of Vietnam, constantly when he's in despair. Of course, the French are also known for their Foreign Legion.)
Fictional Media (To a ridiculous extent that could pass as a parody or Deconstruction. The entire book is a Fictional Document analyzing another unpublished Fictional Document commentating on a fictional film. Note that all of Zampanò's work is fictional in-universe, as well, to the great confusion of the editors and Johnny Truant.)
- Or Is It?
- Fictional Document (The Navidson Record, most of the references [ Lampshaded, but also subverted when some of the references turn out to be real books], the book itself)
- Scrapbook Story
Footnote Fever (you've got footnotes from Johnny Truant, Zampanò, and other editors, plus footnotes within footnotes within footnotes, in one part even making an entire "window" in the book. Soon after that window, the footnotes start going off in weird angles and, should you actually bother to follow, forming actual labyrinths. So...yeah.)
Four Is Death
Fridge Logic (those cameras Will uses for his documentary? They run on pure plot device, the most powerful fuel known to man)
Genius Loci - A nasty one.
Hooker With A Heart Of Gold - Thumper, though she's just a stripper. She's still the most caring and dependable friend Johnny has.
A House Divided - Soon after discovery, Navidson's lover begins to snap and fight with Navidson, Navidson's associates begin arguing constantly (to the point that one of them goes completely nuts, and the children get more violent.
Imported Alien Phlebotinum - It's possible the house is made of it.
- How come? You mean the asteroid material? I think the house put it there just to screw with everyone. It could have been made of teflon if it had wanted to.
- Considering the house manages to have a spiral staircase extend well below the opposite face of the planet (sometimes), I'm pretty sure the pre-Earth dating of some of the samples is the same idea. The house is from space just as much as it tunnels through the planet and out the Indian ocean.
It Got Worse (in the middle of, and right after, Exploration D. Then It Got Better when Navidson survives his literal descent into madness during his last exploration, but looking through his notes will tell you Zampanò was really considering otherwise.)
- Johnny's situation starts getting worse the instant he begins editing the book.
Kick The Dog - The Pekinese.
Kill Em All (averted; check the examples)
Leave The Camera Running - Navidson is described as doing this more than once, a notable example being the 46 seconds following Holloway's death, which makes his sudden disappearance as the house consumes him before the viewers' very eyes all the more frightening.
Left Hanging
Literary Agent Hypothesis, multiple layers.
Living Labyrinth
Loads And Loads Of Characters
Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places (Johnny Truant)
Lysistrata Gambit (it's mentioned at some point that Karen once wouldn't let Will Navidson touch her. For thirteen months.)
Madness Mantra "I'm Holloway Roberts. Born in Menomonie, Wisconsin..."
Malevolent Architecture
Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane
Mary Sue (arguably subverted with Kyrie)
Meaningful Name (Holloway Roberts: "hollow way" = "hallow way" = "hallway" = "always" = "all ways")
Mind Screw
- Anyone who understands this work in its entirety understands, in its entirety, Neon Genesis Evangelion. (This is a law, not an assertion.) Thus, House Of Leaves is Evangelion-compete.
Mobile Maze
Nightmare Dreams
Nightmare Fuel Unleaded (the whole book)
No Fourth Wall
Nothing Is Scarier
Or Is It (An exhibit at the end implies that The Navidson Record could be real in-universe.)
Painting The Fourth Wall The book is printed in three colors, although there are some variations between the different versions. Normal text is printed in black, the word "house" always appears in blue, including in the title, copyright information, etc. Mythological references are in red, as are ~~struck-out passages~~ which are, according to Truant, things Zampanò wanted to leave out. They are usually passages that are at least vaguely threatening to the reader. "Minotaur" may or may not be struck out, depending on if its used in one of the aforementioned mythological references.
Post Modernism. Maybe the book, is, in fact, the labyrinth. There certainly isn't a labyrinth anymore after Navidson burns a copy of House of Leaves.
Prophetic Names (Johnny Truant)
Ripped From The Headlines The real Delial.
Room Full Of Crazy (Eventually Truant's studio apartment has all-black walls covered in random scraps of paper with drawings of empty black hallways on them, homemade soundproofing made of egg cartons, aluminum foil covering the windows, and tape measures on every wall so he knows the minute the place starts expanding.)
- Zampanò's room also counts. Boxes of paper and scraps, some of which are littered onto the floor~~, and the strange gouge marks all over the place~~.
Rule Of Scary - Well, sorta.
The Scottish Trope
Serious Business (The Navidson Record. Everyone who's anyone, and most people who aren't, have analyzed, reviewed, or called attention to it. It's also, apparently, an extremely studied film in psychology, and has numerous theories about why Navidson, even though he knows the danger of the house, keeps descending into it.)
Shout Out
Single Issue Psychology
Snicket Warning Label (The book's dedication, which says "This is not for you.")
Stealth Parody It has been suggested that the novel might be so complex and strange because Danielewski is just fucking with us.
Stepford Smiler (Karen Green, especially after the first exploration.)
Superpowered Evil Side
Take Our Word For It
Tear Jerker "It's ok. You can go now."
These Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know (As evidenced by Johnny's descent into madness.)
Through The Eyes Of Madness - Well past the optical nerve.
Title Drop (in The Navidson Record and one of Zampanò's miscellaneous poems)
- Not just Title Drop but Self Drop - Johnny runs into a band (the real-world book's author's sister's) on his search for the house which has read House of Leaves, including footnotes and edits by Johnny and The Editors.
  - The House of Leaves Navidson was reading and burning had a different number of pages and was indicated to be a novel that apparently bore no relation to this book. Alternatively, it could be seen as a Title Drop in that the Editors/Johnny named the book after the book after Navidson was reading (there's no evidence that the title was Zampanò's own).
  - It had the same number of pages, actually. It includes all of the blank pages and pages containing copyright info, etc.
True Art Is Incomprehensible - if you measure art by incomprehensibility, this is the purest work of art known to man.
- Except for Finnegans Wake.
Twofer Token Minority: Reston.
Ultimate Evil ~~The Minotaur~~
- ~~Arguably, the~~ ~~house~~ ~~itself.~~
Unreliable Narrator: All of them - there are at least three, one of whom actually tells you that one chapter was an outright lie, and then laughs at you for believing it.
The Unreveal: Several—one chapter is dedicated to scientific analysis of various materials recovered from the house. Sounds like it would answer a lot of questions, right? Well, Johnny says he accidentally destroyed most of the manuscript for that chapter. Pretty much the only thing left is the singular confirmation that somehow the labyrinth is older than the solar system and is the same material as asteroids. Meanwhile, at various points in the story, there will be footnotes asking the reader to refer to some document numbered Exhibit One through Six—all six exhibits have no actual content and are just notes by Zampanò to remind himself to write them.
- Also, Karen Green had apparently travelled the world and showed the exploration films to various celebrities, such as Woz, Stephen King, Hunter S. Thompson, among others, and recorded their thoughts of it, and what the house means. Truant decides to contact said celebrites - all he gets is a letter from a composer who claims he never heard of Karen or the house, and an insulting postcard from a feminist Karen interviewed. And yet, a French-Israeli author had seen proof of the interviews...
Very Loosely Based On A True Story - Zampanò's little documentary... starts to spin out of control, suffice to say.
What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic, references, highlighted in various colors and fonts~~, such as to the Greek labyrinth and The Minotaur~~, to make SURE we don't miss them. Not to mention several more layered references to various mythologies.
- Oh, and the poem of Yggdrasil at the very end.
The Woobie
The World Tree, the closest explanation that comes to indicating the nature of the house is that the house contains a portal to the interior of Yggdrasil, which explains the spatial distortions and infinite size.
Your Mileage May Vary (as with all Mark Z. Danielewski books, this is either a very scary book or a pretentious clusterfuck of symbolism. Or both.)